Friday, February 25, 2011

by “spring is coming”, I mean “blizzard is coming”

At the risk of repeating myself, I feel I must again quote “Spinal Tap”.
spinal tap
Artist, Polly Deutsch (Angelica Huston) and Band Manager, Ian Faith (Tony Hendra) in ”This is Spinal Tap” (1984)
IAN: This looks absolutely perfect. I mean it’s, uh, the right proportions. It’ll be this color right?
ARTIST: Yeah. Yeah.
IAN: Yeah. That’s...that’s...that’s just terrific. It almost looks like the real thing.
ARTIST: You got it.
IAN: When we get the actual, uh, set, when we get the piece, it’ll...it’ll follow exactly these specifications. I mean even these contours and everything?
ARTIST: Um, I’m not understanding it. What do you mean “the actual piece?”
IAN: Well I mean...I mean when you build the actual piece.
ARTIST: But this is what you asked for, isn’t it?
IAN: What?
ARTIST: Well this is the piece.
IAN: This is the piece?
ARTIST: Yes.
IAN: Are you telling me that this is it? This is scenery? Have you ever been to Stonehenge?
Stonehenge
ARTIST: No, I haven’t been to Stonehenge.
IAN: The triptychs are...the triptychs are twenty feet high. You can stand four men up them!
ARTIST: Ian, I was...I was...I was supposed to build it eighteen inches high.
IAN: This is insane. This isn’t a piece of scenery.
ARTIST: Look, look. Look, this is what I was asked to build. Eighteen inches. Right here, it specifies eighteen inches. I was given this napkin, I mean...
IAN: Forget this! Fuck the napkin!!!
- “This is Spinal Tap” (1984)'
For those of you unfamiliar with “This is Spinal Tap”, which I’m going to assume means you, Mom, and possibly you, Aunt Susie, the above confusion resulted from Ian using the wrong units symbol – inches, instead of feet – on a sketch of Stonehenge.
I think the National Weather Service might have a similar problem. As did Ian, they gave the units for inches, when they meant feet.
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Does this look like 1” – 3” to you? Because it sure doesn’t to me.
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OK, there is a bright side to this. It’s called ONE MORE CHANCE TO XC SKI! And it won’t happen until at least tomorrow afternoon, because tomorrow morning, I’m going to grit my teeth and expose myself to civic engagement via the joy that is Town Meeting. I missed it last year because I was out of town.
In the meantime, the cats have taken turns prostrating themselves at their altar.
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That altar being, naturally, the woodstove.
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